Hardwood Flooring
If you are buying some hardwood floor, it should be an important decision and significant investment. In order to choose the type of flooring that’s right for you, it’s good to know your needs and preferences in terms of:
Unfinished Solid hardwood
Unfinished solid hardwood is sold in the form of nonvarnished rough strips. These low-cost strips have to be nailed to a wood subfloor. This flooring is generally easy to install, but finishing the surface is more complicated and has to be done on site. You have to pay for finishing on top of the cost of the wood. For quality results, you should hire a highly skilled professional to sand and stain the floor, then to apply three or four coats of polyurethane. This technique is not as common as before due to the inconveniency in finishing the floorings after installation. Therefore contractors nowadays are harder to find for this matter.
Prefinished Solid Hardwood
Prefinished solid hardwood is sold as ready-to-install wood strips that are already sanded, stained, and finished with multiple coats of polyurethane with an aluminum oxide protective finish. The finish is factory-applied in an ideal, controlled environment. A full array of wood species are available in a range of grades, colors, sizes, and shines to blend with any decor. Prefinished solid hardwood is quick and easy to install, and the residents don’t have to leave home during installation.
Prefinished Glue-down Engineered Hardwood
A prefinished engineered hardwood flooring is sold as strips made up of a hardwood surface (called the wear layer) glued on a plywood base. Developed for installation in areas with variable humidity levels, engineered flooring is more stable than solid wood. The strips can be glued directly onto concrete, an acoustic underlay, or even a subfloor with a floor heating system. They can also be stapled or nailed to a plywood subfloor. This is the perfect floor covering for condominiums, basements, and commercial uses.
Prefinished Floating Engineered Hardwood
Similar technology to glue-down engineered hardwood except not fastened to the subfloor, thus the name “floating engineered”.